Lifestyles

Kate Fagan played on a CU basketball team led by born-again Christians from 1999-2004. She writes about coming out as gay. (Courtesy of Kate Fagan)

Twelve years ago, Kate Fagan, a key member of the University of Colorado's celebrated women's basketball team, was torn between elation over five NCAA tournament victories, and her fear of teammates rejecting her for being a lesbian.

It was 2002. Less than 10 years had passed since Colorado voters approved Amendment 2, which prevented protected status on on the basis of sexual orientation. Though the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Amendment 2 in 1996, its initial success left gays and lesbians uncertain about their status in Colorado.

Kate Fagan in 2002 playing for the University of Colorado women's basketball team. (Provided by CU Athletics)

"If you'd asked me then, I'd have said that I wasn't very political," said Fagan, now a columnist for ESPN and author of the newly released book " The Reappearing Act: Coming Out as Gay on a College Basketball Team Led by Born-Again Christians."

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Her indifference to politics was odd, especially for someone who at the time regarded herself as a born-again Christian. Amendment 2 supporters also tended to be right-wing, often evangelical Christians, a group that couched Amendment 2 in terms of preventing "special rights" for homosexuals.

"I wasn't introduced to religion until I got to Colorado," Fagan said.

"I was Catholic, but we didn't go to church that frequently. Now I had these teammates who identified as Christian, and came from families where faith was important. I had never explored religion, and I wanted to learn more about it, and understand what faith was. And these were my friends. Bible study, prayer groups, lessons about the goodness of God — that was what we did when we got together socially."

Perhaps inevitably, sex came up as a topic at meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. It was understood that male-female relationships were fine, as long as abstinence was observed. But at one meeting, a born-again teammate asked, "Who here struggles with homosexuality?"

Fagan's heart stopped. She was just beginning to recognize her own sexual orientation and felt torn between pleasing her religious friends and following her heart. She knew her coach, Ceal Barry, had a female partner. Fagan also knew that Barry drew a sharp line between her private and public lives.

Fagan worried that she would lose her best friend, a devout Christian and fellow teammate, if she came out. She feared alienating her parents, who were rattled when Fagan declared herself an evangelical Christian. And she didn't want to reinforce certain assumptions made about female athletes.

"In women's sports, if you come out as gay, you're reinforcing a stereotype — you're assumed to be gay unless you have a boyfriend," Fagan said in a telephone interview from an assignment in New York.

"We're in a period of change in sports, especially in men's sports, where (Jason) Collins came out in the NBA and is still playing. In male sports, it's a deviation if someone comes out as gay. There are different factors at play in women's sports."

In the end, Fagan came out. Her best friend dropped her. There were rootless years. Only three people — "besides the women I dated" — knew she was gay until 2010, when Fagan reacted to a colleague's "harmless joke about lesbian stereotypes" by saying, "I can laugh about it because I'm gay, too."

Women's basketball (collegiate and professional) remains pretty closeted. Only one college basketball coach is openly lesbian.

"The WNBA is starting to embrace 'otherness,' although it's a work in progress," Fagan said.

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